


fingerprints on my heart

by pendules



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends With Benefits, Love Confessions, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 13:50:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11945601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: He can't stop searching for physical evidence now — it's like a disease. He can't stoptouchinghim, beyond fist-bumps and high-fives: putting an arm around him to make sure he's okay, patting him on the chest to fire him up, resting a firm hand on the small of his back to steady him. It's always a surprise that he's real and solid. It's always a surprise that heletshim touch him.





	fingerprints on my heart

Seth still looks at Dean like he can't quite believe he's real.

It's been weeks since they stood in that ring together, finally united again, after the scuffle that probably always had to happen — maybe Seth _wanted_ Dean to hit him, and hit him _again_ , just to _know_ , just to know he was still feeling _something_. Just to have physical evidence.

He can't stop searching for physical evidence now — it's like a disease. He can't stop _touching_ him, beyond fist-bumps and high-fives: putting an arm around him to make sure he's okay, patting him on the chest to fire him up, resting a firm hand on the small of his back to steady him. It's always a surprise that he's real and solid. It's always a surprise that he _lets_ him touch him. 

Every time Dean hugs him after a victory, he closes his eyes and melts into his embrace and it feels like all of time freezes around them. He could spend a whole lifetime in that moment. Every time he opens his eyes, he expects Dean to have disappeared. He expects to wake up from a blissful dream, tangled up in sheets, clutching at nothing but air, in a cold, empty bed, all alone. Again.

But Dean's _there_. Every time. Seth's eyes follow him around the ring and after he walks away when they get backstage every night. He wonders if Dean knows. If he sees and just doesn't acknowledge it. Maybe he just doesn't care.

*

Maybe it's too much to ask for. Maybe he's just selfish, like he's always been selfish. He's never been happier than this, and this could ruin it all in one reckless, thoughtless moment. But it feels like a lie, to be this close to him again and not tell him — _show_ him every single part of what he feels for him, and Seth made a promise to himself to never lie to Dean again.

It's about a month after they won the titles and Dean's rambling on animatedly about how great that last match was, how great _they_ were, and Seth's nodding along eagerly — and just as he's about to turn around and head back to the showers, Seth says, "Wait," barely more than a whisper, for the first time.

Dean looks back at him, half-surprised, half-curious, and Seth just takes a breath before reaching up and kissing him softly on the mouth. It's short, and chaste, but Seth closes his eyes and lets himself _feel_ it all, because there's an even greater chance that Dean disappears for good after this.

He doesn't, though. Seth opens his eyes and takes in the complete picture of him, observing every subtle shift in body language and expression for evidence of total disaster. But Dean just _stares_ back at him, unblinking, lips still parted. Absolutely silent. 

"Sorry," Seth tells him, hushed, when it's clear he's not about to say or do anything. "I shouldn't have — I just wanted — But it was wrong, I know, I just —" _I just wanted you to know._

Just when Seth's about to accept failure and flee, Dean reaches out and wraps his fingers around his wrist, keeping him there — before he leans in and brushes his own lips over Seth's. Languid and easy and familiar, like they've been doing this forever. Seth sighs against Dean's mouth and Dean deepens the kiss just the slightest before he slowly pulls away. 

He has an oddly vulnerable, almost helpless look on his face.

Seth doesn't even have time to process it or begin to say something before Dean's kissing him again, this time more breath and warmth than actual contact, but still intoxicating all his senses. 

Then, Dean lets him go. They just look at each other for a moment that stretches on and on until it finally breaks and Dean lets his gaze fall and Seth exhales before turning and walking away back to the locker room.

*

They don't talk about it.

Sometimes, Dean kisses him after wins, sweet and hot and electric, both of them left dishevelled and dazed and breathing hard afterwards.

Sometimes, Seth comforts him after particularly gruelling matches with his fingers gently carding through his hair and his lips on his temple and cheekbone and jaw and neck before Dean tips his chin up to fit their mouths together, slow and tender.

Sometimes, he lets Dean take out his frustration by pressing him up against the lockers and kissing him so hard that it draws blood.

Sometimes, they don't kiss at all. Sometimes, they just fall asleep in one of their hotel rooms in the middle of a trashy movie or 90s pay-per-view, curled around each other under the covers.

They don't talk about it.

*

They get drunk after a crazy night and a crazy match.

"Still fucking champions," Dean had shouted in his ear and he'd wanted to kiss him right there, under the lights, in front of thousands of people. And the impulse had shaken something inside of him fundamentally. 

They end up groping each other in the backseat of Dean's car in the parking lot like teenagers, trading wet, clumsy, desperate kisses. Seth feels him getting hard through his jeans against his hip and reaches between them to unbuckle his belt. Dean pulls away, panting, to look at him.

"You sure?" he says.

"Anything you want," Seth replies, mouth going dry. From the expression on Dean's face, he wonders if he shouldn't have said that. 

But Dean just exhales, "Okay," before finding his lips again.

Seth blows him in the back of his car, claustrophobic and hot and messy, and Dean returns the favour by putting his hand down his underwear and making him come in his pants in pretty short order.

Afterwards, they just lie back on the seat and stare up at ceiling, breathing in sync.

He's pretty sure it's one of the greatest nights of his entire life.

*

On the way back to the hotel, Dean just says, "You don't have to do anything you don't want to, you know," without even glancing across at him. He sounds unnervingly sober.

"I know," Seth reassures him. "I'm not."

Dean just nods at the road, almost imperceptibly. 

*

The first time they fuck, Seth wakes up with teeth marks on his throat and fingerprint-shaped bruises on his hips. He almost wishes they wouldn't fade away with time.

*

He wakes up in Dean's bed one morning and it's late, he doesn't have time for a shower before he heads to the gym, he just runs his fingers through his hair and ties it into a messy bun and grabs the first items of clothing he finds from the pile on the floor. 

He's just about to quietly ease the door open when he hears a muffled voice say, "Are you _stealing_ my hoodie?"

He finally looks down at his attire and realises he's wearing Dean's black hoodie with his logo emblazoned on the front in bright red.

"Oh, sorry, I'll —" he says at once.

"It's fine. Keep it. It looks good on you."

Dean's head disappears under the covers again and Seth wonders if he'd imagined the interaction completely or maybe he wasn't actually conscious enough to really know what the hell he was saying.

He leaves still wearing it, though, and doesn't bother washing it.

It still smells like Dean for weeks afterwards.

*

"What the _fuck_ was that?" Dean says when they're alone in the trainer's room. 

There's a gash over his left eyebrow that's still burning sharply — there was quite a bit of blood, it was probably scary, but he can't remember much about it now — his head's still feeling light and foggy.

"You took a ladder to the fucking face — for _me_. What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean's sounding a little bit deranged, and more than a little bit choked-up.

"It's okay," Seth tells him. "I'm fine."

"You can't just _do_ shit like this."

Seth laughs at him slightly hysterically. "Look who's talking."

"Maybe this — maybe this was a bad idea," Dean says, more somber now.

" _What?_ " Seth says, completely focused on Dean now. "What are you talking about? You said you trusted me — You said —" 

_No, no, no, this can't be happening. We were doing so fucking great together — It can't end like this._ His head starts throbbing rapidly again.

"That's not what I…" Dean huffs a sigh. "Just don't do shit like this again, okay? Or I'll punch you in your pretty mouth."

Seth laughs again, out of sheer relief.

Dean puts his arm around him, presses a kiss to the top of his head, breathes in deep like he hasn't been able to since Seth took that shot to the head.

"I'm sorry," he says, because he thinks Dean needs to hear it.

"Asshole," Dean says, holding him even closer.

*

They have a couple days off and Seth's sure that Dean's plans are just to go back to Vegas and spend his days running around in the desert and his nights fucking around in bars or whatever he does. But he's been struggling with something for a few weeks now — since that night in the trainer's room — and it feels like the right time to maybe try to casually bring it up.

"I'm going home for the weekend," he says when they're in Dean's room watching some wild documentary about lizard people or something. He'd zoned out about an hour ago.

"Oh," is all Dean says.

Seth swallows hard before continuing.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come with me, maybe — I mean, you don't have to if you don't want —"

"Do _you_ want me to?" Dean asks pointedly.

"I — I don't know. I don't even know what _this_ ," he says, gesturing between the two of them, "is supposed to _be_."

"Seriously?" Dean says, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, it's not like we had a real conversation about _any_ of this —"

"I thought you were the smart one," Dean says bluntly.

" _Dean_ —"

"You can't tell me you didn't know," Dean says incredulously, almost bordering on angrily.

"Know what?" Seth asks, genuinely confused as hell by all of this.

"That I'm — that I've been fucking _in love with you_ for years now." Definitely angry now. The way he gets to cover up the hurt and the scars and soft parts at his centre. The parts that Seth was never meant to see. Or touch. He knows that now without a doubt.

" _Oh_ ," Seth says, feeling like his heart's dropped to his feet.

"Yeah," Dean says, with a smile that's more of a grimace.

"Oh," Seth says again, stupidly, feeling like the entire world is spinning around him. "I didn't think — I _never_ thought —"

"You never thought what?" he spits out.

"I _know_ you," Seth says, in an almost detached tone now. "I know how intense you are about — about _everything_. I never thought you'd feel that way about _me_."

"Wait," Dean says, evenly. His expression goes as still and cold as stone. "Is that why you did it?"

"What? _No_ ," Seth says immediately, a desperate plea, shaking his head. But then he remembers his promise wasn't just about not lying to Dean — but himself too.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, before opening them and looking Dean dead in the eyes.

"Maybe," he says quietly. "Maybe it was a part of it. Maybe I knew I'd get my heart broken eventually. So I broke yours instead."

Dean nods, the final death knell, and then sighs heavily. He lowers his gaze to the floor like he can't bear to look at him.

"Just go," he says, voice hollow and emotionless.

Seth nods, tears burning in his eyes, before he heads straight over to the door, pulls it open, and walks through it without a backwards glance.

*

It's only when he's on a plane halfway back to Iowa that he realises he never got to tell Dean that he loved him too.

*

Seth's been playing video games and eating junk food on his couch for the better part of the morning and afternoon when his doorbell rings. He hasn't bothered to check his phone all day. He was pretty damn adamant to his family and friends that he needed some alone time. So he's pretty annoyed that he has to pause his game and actually get up to go tell whoever's standing on his doorstep to get lost. 

It's Dean. 

Of course it's Dean.

Because he's probably still dreaming.

The Dean in his dreams never looks at him like _that_ , though. Sometimes he has his hands around his throat and Seth closes his eyes and lets him squeeze and squeeze until he wakes up, gasping and frantically checking for bruises. Sometimes he presses him face-first up against a wall and slowly takes his clothes off and slowly takes him apart, hands in his hair, mouth on the back of his neck, fucking him slow and steady until he's begging for _more, harder_ , begging to come —

 _This_ Dean looks like he hasn't slept in days, he looks tired and worn-out and softer somehow, younger. He doesn't look like he's here for a fight. 

He just stares at Seth's face blearily, and then stares at his chest instead, for some reason, frowning.

Seth looks down and realises, too late, that he's wearing the hoodie he took from Dean. He'd slept in it and hadn't bothered to change, because who the fuck cares, really. It probably smells. _He_ probably smells. 

He probably looks like even more of a mess than Dean does. It's almost laughable. Maybe he's finally going crazy from all of this. 

"What are you doing here?" he finally manages to ask.

"I came straight from the airport," Dean says, a non-answer probably borne of exhaustion.

"I can see that," Seth says, biting the inside of his cheek.

"You're wearing my hoodie."

"Yeah, I forgot I still had it. It's pretty comfortable. And I like the colour scheme."

Dean actually cracks a smile at that. "The _colour scheme_ ," he repeats.

"Yeah," Seth says indulgently. "You want it back?"

"Nah," Dean says, shaking his head. "But maybe I could crash on your couch instead?"

Seth sighs. "Yeah, sure."

*

They're sitting on opposite ends of the couch, watching the pause screen, Seth making himself as small as possible, his hands tucked into the pockets of Dean's hoodie, Dean's eyes shut and his head lolling back against the top of the couch. Seth's sure he's about to pass out on him at any moment.

But then he speaks, the sudden noise in the dead silence nearly making him jump. "Why'd you leave?"

"You _told_ me to go," Seth reminds him.

"Yeah, but I _also_ told you that I love you," Dean counters.

 _Love_ , Seth registers. Present tense.

Seth shrugs. "Seemed like a lot of mixed signals to me."

"Well, isn't that what we are?" Dean asks. "A metric fucking ton of mixed signals?"

Seth can't exactly argue with that.

He takes a breath, bites his lip before asking, cautiously, "Did I fuck it up again?"

"No," Dean tells him firmly. "You didn't. _I_ did. I was just too fucking scared of what this meant. _How much_ this meant."

"I don't blame you," Seth says softly. "I shouldn't have tried to push you into something you weren't ready for."

"I _want_ to be, though," Dean admits.

"Yeah?" Seth says, looking him right in the face.

"Who the fuck knows what's gonna happen tomorrow, right? And we already wasted _so much_ goddamn time."

"Are you saying you want to go steady?" Seth teases.

"Hey, we're already in your hometown. We can go all-out. You can even take me home to meet your mom." Dean almost looks and sounds completely serious about that.

"You've already met my mom," Seth points out. 

"So what?" Dean says, like it's a challenge.

"Okay," Seth agrees, trying not to smile like a complete dope. "Let's do this thing."

Dean shifts closer on the couch until Seth can feel his warmth, smell the mix of leather and musk and something vaguely outdoorsy that's undeniably _Dean_. Their knees touch on the sofa, and Dean brushes some of his hair back, their eyes fixed on each other.

It feels like another dream, until Dean reaches inside the pocket of his hoodie and takes his hand in his own, tangles them together.

"You're so ridiculous," Dean tells him, the fondest look on his face.

" _You're_ ridiculous," Seth retorts weakly.

"How am _I_ ridiculous?" Dean asks, mock-offended.

"Because — Because I'm _ridiculously_ in love with you."

Dean groans but before he can complain about the gag-worthy cheesiness, Seth shuts him up by pulling him in for a kiss.

When he closes his eyes this time, it doesn't feel anything like dreaming.


End file.
